One of the highlights of the bigger Prides (I'm thinking London, Brighton and Manchester - but I may be doing some of the others a disservice) is the parade and the Brighton one wends its way from the pier, along the seafront and then through town eventually hitting Preston Park.
As we were staying on a seafront hotel we decided we'd watch the start of the parade. I always find that Pride parades are a good opportunity for fun photos and cute guys. The theme this year was 'Pride by the Sea' so a lot of the floats had a nautical or aquatic feel - with some very funky and colourful head-dresses.
I always get a bit emotional when all the big company's and organisation's floats go past. It always reminds me how far we've come when organisations like the police, the NHS and banks like Barclay's and Lloyds TSB have high profile presence in Pride parades.
While the parade stayed dry we weren't so luck for the festival at the park. After the parade had moved on we headed into the shopping streets for a bit of a look around before heading down to the park. It was quite strange the way that Pride completely takes over the centre of Brighton, we kept coming across the parade as it slowly made its way down the streets lined with onlookers. After a spot of lunch we followed the crowds down to the park, the weather gradually getting worse until shortly after we arrived at the festival the heavens opened. By this time we'd managed to find the very poorly signed and almost mythical 'bears tent' where we knew most of the guys from Oxford would be. We managed to keep the worst of the rain off with a combination of brollies and huddling and there was more than a touch of the Dunkirk spirit about it all. Needless to say my bf was very popular due to his oversized golf umbrella (which sadly broke before the end of the day). Whoever said that size doesn't matter has obviously never been in a wet and muddy park when its bucketing down! Eventually we gave up and de-camped to a pub for a pint before heading back to St James Street for the evening.
The street parties on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon have a really good atmosphere. Yeah, its a bit of a crush and getting about can be a pain, but everyone seems to be having a good time and its all very good natured. We always tend to bar crawl, have a couple of pints at various places and because gay pubs tend to serve terrible bitter we nearly always end up at pubs that are not normally gay! This year we got stung a bit on the Sunday afternoon. The St James Inn, where we'd had very nice beer on Friday night, decided they were going to add an 80p 'Pride Tax' and the beer we'd paid £2.70 a pint for on Friday suddenly went up by 30% to £3.50! We should have walked away in disgust - but for some reason we stayed to get fleeced for another one...
As Sunday was much better weather we were able to lounge around in the park near St James St with our lunch before joining the throng for beers. Much beer and chat later we decided it was time for food and went in search of curry. We were probably a bit too drunk to fully appreciate Indian Summer but it seemed pretty good and maybe next year we'll go back before we go drinking :)
After dinner we were pretty much done for the evening, so headed back to our hotel at a rather sedate 2200 or so. This meant we were up nice and refreshed for the trip home on Monday after a lovely weekend, despite the variable weather.
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